Labor Day

One day for us is a lot like any other; it's mostly babies and hospital. We did appreciate that there was free parking at the hospital for the holiday, though! (The hospital parking garage recently both raised their rates, and eliminated the discount pass for relatives of people who are hospitalized for long periods of time. So, our daily parking expense went up from $4 a day to a maximum of $8 a day. That adds up, and it's also grating because it seems to add insult to injury --bad enough to have a kid in the hospital for months, but we have to pay to see him! If we win the lottery, we'll establish a NICU parking fund.)

James was zonked out for most of our visit this afternoon. They were trying to wean him off the ventilator, but he wasn't quite ready yet -- he was doing what they call "riding the vent", which means that he was letting the machine do the work for him, and not breathing more frequently on his own. He was moving around and waking up more as we were leaving, though, and the most recent report was that he had been awake for about three hours, and was breathing over the ventilator more then. So, that's good.

The new stoma (the ostomy opening) has prolapsed a little, which means that a little more intestine has come out. (The stoma is usually just the tip of the intestine.) We don't know what they'll want to do about that yet. On the brighter side, he did have a tiny bit of stool coming out, which is good because it means that the stoma is open and that there's some bowel activity.